


An Analysis of Markus (aka why I think he's autistic while other people don't)

by Pegasus143



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Autism, Autism Acceptance Month 2020, Autistic Markus (Detroit: Become Human), Essays, Fanwork Research & Reference Guides, Gen, Meta Essay, author is autistic, autism representation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-02
Updated: 2020-04-02
Packaged: 2021-03-01 05:20:53
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,595
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23439847
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pegasus143/pseuds/Pegasus143
Summary: This is an essay explaining why I think Markus is autistic, though it could be generalizable to other fandoms in terms of headcanoning and portraying characters as autistic.
Comments: 8
Kudos: 11





	An Analysis of Markus (aka why I think he's autistic while other people don't)

A couple weeks ago I was scrolling through the analysis flair on the DBH subreddit, and found an interesting post that you can read/watch [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/DetroitBecomeHuman/comments/cal4qa/weird_acting_choices_body_language_and_facial/). Basically, the author was saying that there was a lack of chemistry on Markus’ part during the Markus/North romance, and was especially comparing it to scenes Markus has with Carl, where he appears visibly happy. But that got me thinking: all those scenes with Carl? He’s not deviant yet. And in the scenes during Night of the Soul involving Carl, he also doesn’t show his emotions on his face as much as he does before becoming deviant.

To test this, I went through several other scenes that occur after Markus becomes deviant that would be highly emotional. These included several North/Simon/Josh death scenes, scenes that occur after being successful/failing at the demonstration/revolution, suicides, some happy scenes with both North and Simon, and a couple others.

I’ll be including more detailed analysis later on in this essay, but I started thinking that maybe Markus’ story would be better read with deviancy being a metaphor for accepting yourself as autistic/otherwise neurodivergent.

There was one consistent pattern I found when looking at facial expressions, which was that Markus tended to express a lot of emotion during scenes of pain or anguish, such as after he’s been wounded too many times in the revolution and North tries to give him her heart.

You’ll also notice that he doesn’t really show emotion at a lot times when it seems like he should be happy. Consider the end of “Spare Parts” after a successful mission. North and Simon, who were both on board with the mission after a little convincing, both appear really happy, Josh a little less so (which is reasonable considering that he wasn’t really on-board with it in the first place).

Based on that, Markus should be pretty happy, too, considering it was his idea, but doesn’t really look it.

As for happy scenes, I’ve found exactly one smile after he’s become deviant, which is at the end of “From the Dead”, where even though he’s having trouble with that smile of his, it’s still way more genuine than anything we’ve seen previously.

There’s a clear difference, and I think it’s because he’s not just pasting on a smile because his programming says to. He’s smiling because he actually _feels_ happy, to a degree that he’s never felt before. Getting a second chance at life sure seems like something to be that happy about.

How do I know all this? I’m like Markus. People misread my facial expressions constantly, thinking I’m in a bad mood when I’m really not. In order to communicate my emotions better to people, I learned to “turn on” certain expressions, but they never really look genuine, like before Markus is deviant. I can only get a genuinely happy smile in moments of extreme happiness, such as when I found out that I was going to have a younger sister.

This phenomenon of facial expressions is part of something called “flat affect”, which involves a lack of emotional expression through facial expressions and tone of voice, as well as a lack of eye contact and discussing emotions in a detached manner. This is commonly seen in autistic people, and is reflected in the criteria for being diagnosed as such.

The CDC has a listing of the diagnostic criteria for Autism Spectrum Disorder [here.](https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/autism/hcp-dsm.html) These criteria are taken from the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, 5th edition, which is used in the US for diagnosing mental illness, personality disorders, and neurodevelopmental disorders (this latter category is what autism falls into, meaning that it is **not** a mental illness). Let’s start with part A of the criteria which focuses on how the person communicates and interacts with others. Since the criteria are pretty wordy, I’ll try to paraphrase them in order to make them more clear.

A. The person shows deficits in communication/interaction in multiple contexts, shown through the following at some point in their life:

  1. Not showing reciprocity in interactions, such as not having back-and-forth conversation (person does all the talking or all the listening); not sharing interests, emotions, or affect; not starting or responding to interactions.
  2. Not showing or showing atypical nonverbal communication, such as nonmatching verbal and nonverbal communication, abnormalities in eye contact and body language, not understanding or unable to use gestures, or a total lack of facial expressions and nonverbal communication.
  3. Difficulties in developing, maintaining, and understanding relationships. This can include difficulty in changing behavior according to different social contexts, difficulties in making friends or imaginative play, or a lack of interest in peers.



We’re going to start with number 2, since it picks up where we left off with the flat affect stuff mentioned previously, then go on to 1 and 3.

Previously we discussed Markus’ facial expressions, specifically how they are lacking in certain situations where we expect to see them (such as after completing a mission successfully or when engaging in romantic interactions with North). As far as we can tell (since this is a third person game) he does make eye contact, but we don’t really see many gestures (the only ones I can think of are his attempts to stop North/Simon from taking out their heart, and potentially interfacing if it can be counted as a gesture). This gestures part is actually really interesting because when you think of someone making speeches, you usually think of a few hand gestures being in there, but instead you get Markus just standing there with his arms at his sides.

So, while he doesn’t fulfill every example listed, he does fulfill some, and in multiple contexts, therefore fulfilling criteria number 2.

1 and 3 are a little more difficult due to the video game context and the limitations of these criteria. Let’s consider a situation where the player, after telling North about Markus’ past, doesn’t ask about her past, which seems like it would count towards not showing reciprocity in the interaction. She clearly has the expectation that he will ask about it, considering the down arrow with her that you get after making that choice, so there’s not some difference between how humans and androids socialize that would make this a typical mode of socialization. The player probably has a reason for this – maybe they don’t care about North that much, or maybe they already figured out North’s backstory through clues gained by Connor and don’t feel like they need confirmation.

But the diagnostic criteria doesn’t talk about reasons why someone does something – it only says that they don’t do it, either in the expected way or at all. This is because they’re meant for use by some outside party and are often used on a population who may not be able to articulate what they’re thinking when doing something (communication supports are often restricted or expensive without a diagnosis, and often still are even with one). Also, in a video game, the player is given a lot of additional information that may be difficult for an autistic person to get in real life, such as knowing how a choice or interaction affected your relationship with someone else, having defined relationship titles, and knowing if an interaction was unlocked by your relationship status with someone else. That means that in order to apply these criteria, we really need to think about the “multiple contexts” part, and not be thinking about this as Markus/the player.

Thankfully, we have a character who does act as a sort of psychologist/family counselor: Lucy.

Alright, so let’s pretend we’re Lucy, an outside observer not privy to Markus’/the player’s mind, reasoning, or UI. So Markus shows up in Jericho, looks around a little, and is like, “Hey, we should go to the Cyberlife Warehouse to get some parts to help everyone,” even though he just showed up 5 minutes ago. That really looks like he doesn’t understand that he’s an acquaintance of all these androids, and that someone with his relationship status can’t just run around and try to solve all the problems of someone they just met.

Most of Markus’ interactions with others come from what’s necessary for missions. When we see him initiating interactions outside of this context in Time to Decide and Night of the Soul, we see a lot of “the other person talks, and he just sits there and listens, only answering if they ask a direct question”. For example, when he gets asked what happens after death, that’s a direct question, but Josh’s dialogue in both these chapters is not a direct question.

We can compare this to when he interacts with Josh (and with Simon, if North is alive) in Night of the Soul. He just sits there and listens to each of them, giving a nod before walking away, never acknowledging what they said verbally.

He also addresses his emotions in an atypical way. When North says “You seem preoccupied” at the beginning of Freedom March, he can say what he’s feeling, but he doesn’t initiate discussion of his feelings without prompting like this when talking to someone else.

He does discuss emotions with Carl/Carl’s grave in Night of the Soul without prompting, but we have to remember that he hasn’t seen Carl since becoming deviant (or, becoming accepting of his neurodivergence, if we’re using that metaphor). He’s used to acting in a neurotypical way around Carl, and may turn back to that because it’s what he’s used to in this context. I’m not saying that Carl is necessarily a bad person, because a lot of neurotypical people often unconsciously “reward” neurotypical behaviors through their social interactions and relationships simply because they don’t know any better.

There’s also another emotional interaction that he initiates in Freedom March, which is the interface with North. Remember that he’s interfaced with Lucy before, so he does know what he’s getting into and that it will reveal his feelings. He’s doing it purposefully, to show what he’s feeling (about his life and about her) without needing to express it verbally, which can be difficult for a lot of autistic people. Based on this, I’m going to say that he probably has difficulty verbally expressing his emotions, which then results in a lack of emotional expression when combined with his flat affect.

So while I haven’t analyzed every interaction in the game, which would be both unreasonable and often redundant, we can see that criteria 1 and 3 do apply in some different contexts, even if it’s not obvious at first glance while playing the game.

Now let’s turn our attention from part A to part B of the diagnostic criteria. Each of the part B criteria has a term generally used in the autistic community when referring to it, so I’ll be using that language when explaining the criteria and then defining them more as we go.

B. The person shows restricted, repetitive patterns in their behavior, interests, or activities. This is shown by doing/experiencing **at least two** of the following at some point in their life:

  1. Stimming
  2. Executive dysfunction
  3. Special interests
  4. Sensory hyper/hypo sensitivity



**Stimming**

Stimming is a behavior that is technically exhibited in both neurotypical and neurodivergent people, but often appears differently in these groups, which is why it is part of the diagnostic criteria but is not necessarily required for diagnosis. It may be used for emotional expression, emotional regulation, and/or sensory regulation.

Some examples of things that neurotypical people do that count as stimming include:

  * Crossing/uncrossing arms or legs
  * Playing with hair
  * Watching “oddly satisfying” videos
  * Nail-biting



The first couple may be indicators of frustration or boredom in neurotypical people, which can lead to miscommunication if an autistic person stims in that way but is doing so for a different reason. Additionally, some stims, such as nail-biting, may have childish connotations, so someone who repeatedly stims in this way may be treated differently to others who do not behave in such a way.

There are also some stims that are usually associated with autistic people, including:

  * Rocking
  * Spinning around (most noticeable when standing up, though can also be done in a chair, swing, etc.)
  * Flapping arms or hands
  * Making sounds that do not appear to be for communication purposes (including screeching/screaming, repeating words/phrases/noises from TV or other people, or clicking sounds made with the tongue)



The main difference between these stims and the ones I listed previously is that these tend to be more obvious and less socially accepted by non-autistic people. However, not stimming when the autistic person feels it is necessary, even if there is social pressure not to, can result in things like meltdowns or shutdowns, which I’ll talk more about later.

So… how does Markus stim? He doesn’t do anything obvious, and typically sits or stands in a relaxed way with his hands either folded or holding onto something.

However, there are a couple ways of stimming I thought of that aren’t noticeable and would work particularly well for an android:

  * Tracing letters, numbers, or patterns on the back of the teeth with the tongue (since androids don’t eat and heal quickly, any damage from this would have a minimal impact on them)
  * Imagining seeing/hearing/feeling enjoyable senses (androids can precisely play back particular parts of their memories)



So, while we don’t really have evidence that Markus is stimming, it’s still possible that he is.

**Executive Dysfunction**

Executive dysfunction refers to deficits in executive functioning skills, which you can read more about [here](https://memory.ucsf.edu/symptoms/executive-functions). There’s quite a few things affected by these, so I’ve attempted to group them into a few general categories:

  * Planning
  * Flexibility in thought and plans
  * Starting/finishing/switching tasks & multi-tasking
  * Learning rules (especially social rules) & monitoring appropriateness of words/actions
  * Problem-solving & decision-making, especially for unusual problems
  * Emotional regulation
  * Monitoring external stimuli



Let me guess what you’re thinking: “Markus is the leader of the revolution! He has to be able to do all these things!” But North, Simon, and Josh all contribute more than you might think. While Markus canonically comes up with the plans for the missions in Spare Parts, Stratford Tower, and Capitol Park, North is very much the leader in Spare Parts, navigating the four of them successfully through the docks and changing their route as needed to avoid the guards. Meanwhile, when Markus has to make similar on-the-fly decisions and changes of plan in Stratford Tower… Simon can very easily get injured (and possibly die, though injury is much more likely).

In Capital Park, even though Markus comes up with the idea for the mission, him and North are just one of several different teams that goes out to the Cyberlife stores. All the reports back are from Josh, who seems to be coordinating the different teams. Also in this mission, we start seeing some of the lack of monitoring stimuli that can’t just be attributed to player negligence. When Markus goes to hack the security system where the utility androids are working before having disabled the surveillance drone, he has no idea that it’s coming until North calls out to him, rather than noticing it on his own. It’s also quite telling that the options you’re most likely to see first after getting spotted are “Act Natural” (aka kiss North against her will) and “Abandon Mission”, both of which have more negative repercussions than hiding behind a car off to the right side of the screen, which will allow you to continue the mission and improve your relationship with North.

A lot of the plans in the game also have a pretty fatal flaw in them: Markus is always having to make some decision that could’ve been “easily” anticipated and planned for beforehand, right on the spot. Guards, police, and riot cops should be pretty expected in the kinds of scenarios that Markus & co end up in… but there’s never a plan in place beforehand for how to deal with them. Of course, if you’re bad at planning, it’s a lot more likely that you wouldn’t have contingency plans.

Also… why is Markus always making the decisions? When he first proposes his plan in Time to Decide, Josh and Simon are initially against it, which should mean that Markus is outvoted until Simon decides that getting the parts is worth the risk. Deciding whether to let John join the group and whether to attempt to get the truck are also decisions where there is a clear majority opinion between North, Josh, and Simon, though Markus is always the one who gets to make the decision.

This seems like it’s an extension of and accommodation for inflexible thinking: if North, Josh, and Simon each state their piece, and Markus hears them out and chooses something, this is allowing him to both better understand their perspectives (which could also help him with flexibility in that regard) while avoiding potential negative consequences of going completely cold-turkey against the inflexible thinking. One thing a lot of autistic people experience is meltdowns or shutdowns, where the person cannot function properly due to what is going on in their life (a lot of which has to do with either flexibility in thinking, lack of emotional regulation, or sensory stimulation) and expresses their emotions/calms themselves through either verbal/physical outbursts (meltdown) or complete unresponsiveness (shutdown). The fact that we don’t see these things happen with Markus in the game can be considered a good thing – these are very mentally and physically exhausting, which nobody wants, and show that he is getting support. When North, Josh, and Simon do things like temporarily leading or helping plan missions, they’re really accommodating Markus in a way that doesn’t make a big deal out of it. Overall, even though we don’t see Markus displaying every hallmark of executive dysfunction, I do think that what we see is enough evidence that it is occurring.

**Special Interests**

What are these, you ask? It’s something that an autistic person takes interest in, but to a more intense level than a neurotypical person shows interest in something (or than an autistic person shows interest in their non-special interests). A few ways (though not all these apply to everyone) to tell if something is a special interest rather than just a regular interest are:

  * Having the ability to concentrate on the interest for an extended amount of time, to the point where the person may neglect their other needs (such as food, water, sleep, or socialization)
  * Feeling relaxed when participating in the interest, especially if it is something that others would not consider relaxing or energy-restoring
  * Feeling immense pleasure or joy from interacting with the interest
  * Having a good memory for facts related to the interest
  * Using the special interest as a way to socialize (either because it is an inherently social activity or by discussing it extensively with others) for a large amount of socialization time



Notice that none of these mention anything about what the interest actually is. It can be literally anything, even irrespective of whether or not it is considered socially/culturally acceptable for a certain person to have. This can make it difficult to distinguish whether or something is a special interest from an outsider’s perspective if it’s something that would be seen as “acceptable”, such as if an AFAB 7-year-old had a special interest in horses (yes, this was me as a kid).

Let’s go back to Markus. What does he talk extensively about to others? The revolution (there’s only a couple of dialogue prompts with North that don’t deal directly with it). What does he spend a large amount of time on? The revolution (note that he only ever seeks out a break due to the emotional toll of the events that occur during Capitol Park, and it was only for a pretty short amount of time before Freedom March).

Obviously it’s kind of hard to tell how he’s feeling about the events – he does seem considerably more relaxed than his companions in a lot of tense moments (compared to his baseline expressions, which… are not super telling), but he also doesn’t seem as happy as them when things go right. However, this can be attributed to the flat affect discussed earlier. And memory isn’t going to be a great metric to use, since androids should have a perfect memory, barring memory reset. So… I think it’s safe to say that he’s got a special interest in the revolution/android rights.

**Sensory Hyper/Hypo Sensitivity**

Sensory hypersensitivity is when a person perceives a certain sense very strongly, and therefore tries to avoid that sense. Sensory hyposensitivity is when a person perceives a certain sense very weakly, and therefore seeks out that sense. These can change in magnitude depending on levels of stress (not just limited to emotional stress, but also to not getting physical or mental needs met).

This is the one category from part B that I have absolutely nothing for. However, remember that part B only requires 2 out of the 4 requirements to be fulfilled, in which case I have done my job.

Now we’re going to finish up going through the diagnostic criteria before I answer some questions you’ve probably accumulated while reading this. The three parts of the criteria I haven’t gone through yet can be paraphrased as:

C. The above symptoms must be present in early development. However, they may not be present to their full extent until life demands go over the individual’s capabilities, or could be masked by learned strategies.

D. The above symptoms cause significant impairment in important areas of functioning.

E. This is not better explained by intellectual disability/intellectual developmental disorder or by global developmental delay.

We’ve actually mostly addressed these, but I did want to touch on them specifically.

For part C, we don’t see different tests that may have been run when Markus was developed, or any of his early life after being gifted to Carl, so we can’t say for sure anything about how he acted then. One of the things I mentioned early on was how deviancy could be considered a metaphor for a neurodivergent person’s self-acceptance – this would be very supported by the idea that Markus was masking while with Carl in order to be seen as acceptable. Masking is when an autistic person attempts to hide behaviors that may make them identifiable as being unlike others, though they are usually not consciously aware of why they are different. While this can protect them from judgement or ridicule, it isn’t fool-proof, so some odd behaviors can still slip in, like how I mentioned earlier that Markus’ facial expressions before becoming deviant seemed disingenuous. Masking can also be very physically and mentally taxing, and will often eventually lead to an unexpected outburst when performed over a long period of time (such as Markus deciding to push Leo). We only played non-deviant Markus for less than a day, so I couldn’t get a good feel for his energy levels, but that outburst definitely happened with Leo.

For part D, it’s important to consider what would happen if you removed accommodations. If the characters around Markus did not act in specific ways to accommodate his needs, what would happen? I think we’d see a lot more death opportunities for the characters in his story, for one. We might also see him not connecting as easily with his companions as he does in the game. These feel fairly balanced with the death opportunities and relationship-building opportunities in Connor’s story (I’m presuming him to not be autistic for now), and actually tend to be more favorable than the opportunities in Kara’s story (seriously, she can die an absolute ton, and she can’t get to her highest relationship level with Luther until pretty late in the game).

Part E doesn’t really apply here as far as I can tell, since we’re talking about androids.

Now… onto what you’ve probably been wondering this whole time:

**What about Connor?**

He’s considered autistic by a lot of people. This view could be supported by his odd socialization patterns, coin tricks, and odd patterns of emotional responses. Obviously, you can have whatever headcanons you like, and even if you don’t agree with my views, I hope you’ve learned something by reading all this. With that being said, I think Autistic Markus has a lot more merit than Autistic Connor.

For starters, when we see Connor doing all these behaviors? He’s not deviant yet. Once he becomes deviant, he socializes like a neurotypical person, his coin disappears (if Hank hasn’t taken it), and he gives the emotional reactions we would expect in the situations he encounters. However, we think of all these behaviors as being uniquely “Connor” because he is not deviant for a majority of the game. I think this is a disservice to his character, as a Connor who deviated earlier could have so much potential. I’ve read countless fics where Connor deviates at some other point and is able to help others – whether human or android – in storylines akin to Kara’s or Markus’. I’m going to drop a video by Overly Sarcastic Productions discussing robots in science fiction [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZGRdxP_8Js), which does a good job at explaining why pre-deviation Connor appears neurodivergent, while deviant (“human”) Connor acts neurotypically.

Now to the second part… go think of some characters portrayed as autistic in recent media. I’m thinking Newt Scamander (Fantastic Beasts), Josh Sauchak (Watch Dogs 2), and Shaun Murphy (The Good Doctor). What do these three have in common with each other and with Connor? Hm… they’re all white guys, with their intelligence in a specialized subject portrayed as their major asset to the team. But not every autistic person fits all those boxes. Non-white autistic people exist, though are less likely to be identified as autistic due to barriers to access ([source](https://www.cdc.gov/ncbddd/autism/addm-community-report/differences-in-children.html)). Autistic women and non-binary people exist ([and there’s a whole charity dedicated to them](https://awnnetwork.org/)). And there’s a ton of people with special interests who can’t necessarily use them as a career or to further a revolution (why did you think I was writing this?), or who may face other barriers to learning or applying information, such as learning disabilities or intellectual disability. The only recent autistic character I can think of who doesn’t check all these boxes is the blue power ranger, but I don’t know anything about power rangers except that they have different colored suits and some sort of bad guy to fight, so I’m not the best person to ask about that. What I’m saying is that Markus gives some level of variety to the autistic people who are normally portrayed in fiction.

No matter who you headcanon as autistic… notice what wasn’t included in the previous 4,000 words. I never said that an autistic character has to act like a child, never feel romantic and/or sexual love/desire, or be incredibly smart. Yet that’s what fandom (and definitely some parts of society as a whole) thinks that autistic people are, and portrays them as such. You can write an autistic character who has a special interest in something meant to appeal to children, who is asexual or aromantic, or who has savant syndrome, but don’t misconstrue the whole thing as if it is because they’re autistic, because it’s not. If you take only one thing from what I’ve written, take this: autistic characters are characters, just like any other.


End file.
